Lake George, N.Y. — On a bright spring morning, volunteers from military veteran and history groups gathered outside the New York State Museum in Albany. "Whoever's going to be pallbearers, come on in, take your places," said Karl Remmers, with the New York-Penn Military Vehicle Collectors Club.
Former service members and others stepped forward and pulled on white gloves, then began loading small pine boxes onto military trucks draped with American flags and black funeral bunting.
These vehicles would transport the remains of more than 40 Revolutionary War-era soldiers to their final resting place in Lake George, N.Y. "It is an extremely high honor," Remmers said. "This is not the first time we've done funerals."
Lisa Anderson, curator of bioarcheology at the museum, watched as the boxes were placed carefully and wrapped for the journey north. "Today is really the beginning of proper honors for young men who basically volunteered to go and fight for our independence," she said.
This ceremony, coming during the 250th anniversary year of America's war for freedom from the British, follows an accidental discovery in 2019.
Workers were excavating the foundation for an apartment building in Lake George when they began finding shattered bones, teeth, and historical artifacts.
"There was almost an immediate discovery of some buttons that related to the Revolutionary War," Anderson said. "They were from the uniform of a soldier from the First Pennsylvania Battalion. So we knew this was significant."
Researchers spent years collecting and sifting through remains, using forensic techniques to learn as much as possible about who they were, how they died, and how they should be honored.
A procession through one frontier of the American Revolution
Those honors included a procession through towns along the Upper Hudson River Valley that were once battlegrounds.
Beginning with the French and Indian War in the 1750s and continuing through the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, armies from Britain, France, the American colonies, and Native tribes fought bitterly over what was then a war-torn frontier.
On this day in Saratoga Springs, crowds lined the street, applauding as the military trucks carrying the Revolutionary War remains stopped outside town hall.
"To be able to recognize those folks today is really a great honor," said Sean Kelleher, the town historian.
Kelleher formed part of a volunteer honor guard, wearing his reenactor garb, the brown wool coat and trousers, while carrying the hunting musket of a Continental Army soldier. He was also part of the research effort to learn as much as possible about these soldiers, but their individual names and stories are lost.
"With these soldiers, unfortunately, there's not that detail," he said.
Researchers acknowledge a lot of mysteries remain about the roughly 44 individuals recovered. Most were apparently part of a military campaign that began in the fall of 1775, when the Continental Army invaded Canada. It was a bold effort aimed at turning Quebec against the British and forming a fourteenth colony.
Ultimately, the campaign was a disaster and the Americans retreated in 1776; their ranks swept by outbreaks of typhus and smallpox. "They had no provisions. They didn't have tents," said Lisa Anderson. "There were lots of reports of starvation."
The colonial army established a crude military hospital for small pox patients in Lake George. After studying the remains, Anderson and other researchers concluded that these men, along with one woman and a child, were among hundreds who died of disease and were buried quickly in unmarked graves.
Researchers also found that many of the soldiers were teenagers. "Knowing that so many of them were young, it just, it resonates with a lot of us," Anderson said. "Many of them enlisted in their teens, some in their 20s."
"They've been found now and they're being recognized"
Lake George is a resort town now. The horrors of war and disease were replaced long ago by idyllic scenery and tourists strolling on the lakeshore.
Early in the afternoon, the procession arrived at a hillside at the edge of a forest in Lake George Battlefield Park.
Hundreds of people watched quietly as volunteers slid the pine boxes one-by-one into small mausoleum-like structures, known as columbaria, that sit at the center of a new memorial.
Dan Barusch, who serves as the town's historic preservation planner, said his community worked hard to honor these individuals.
"We have been for decades, centuries even, finding human remains in the soil here," Barusch said. "We felt that these [burial arrangements] were beautifully respectful."
The remains are placed next to the remains of unidentified soldiers from the French and Indian War.
As volunteers raised an American flag over the memorial, a priest from the local Roman Catholic church, Rev. Joseph Busch, stepped forward to pray.
"We earnestly ask you to look on this sacred space now and bless it, as we commit to the earth those who fought so hard for our freedom," he prayed.
Larry Handy and Jim Reilly watched from the edge of the crowd, both wearing Revolutionary War reenactor garb. Both are regional historians who took part in the effort to recover and study the remains before the reinternment.
"These were the kind of guys who, when the call came, they would run to help out and do what they had to do," Reilly said.
"There was satisfaction in recovering the remains of these individuals," said Handy, who told NPR that his ancestors took part in the failed campaign where these men died.
"You know they were lost to history. We don't know their names but they've been found now, and they're being recognized," he said.
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